How much does everyones dish go out?

[sullic82]

I am thinking of getting dishnetwork. And was wondering if it is reliable in a snow storm, heavy winds, or heavy rain. I know when satilight first came out it would go out frequently. And i was wondering if it still does and for how long. I live in 54901 oshkosh wi.

 

[volkodav]

it's hard to say. you have to try and see for your self. My dish at home doesn't go out in snow storms. It goes out on occasion if the rain is really heavy, usually when the front of the storm is just starting to move through, and even then it only goes out for a couple minutes. Our signal is normally at 105 out of 125 for 119/110.

 

[Mike500]

We had a really bad ice storm, here, in Greenville Spartanburg, SC, about 6 weeks ago. About 450,000 customers lost electricity and most lost cable.

I didn't lose electricity. Satellite worked contuously, as well as OTA.

They are still clearing down trees and branches off curbs of streets.

I would say that rain fade occurs no more than 10 periods a year for no more than 10-15 minute periods. My stand alone TiVo records a lot of programs. Only one part of a program showed a recorded lost satellite screen.

 

[Anole]

big is beautiful

Where I live, I have none of those atmospheric problems.
Reception is solid year-round.
The last outage I had was cured by climbing up a ladder in the middle of the night...
...with some big-@ssed clippers in hand...
......and trimming back a limb that was blowing in front of my dish in the windstorm.

The people up in Canada, with low elevation angles to the birds, and horrible weather, solve their problem with bigger dishes.
If you keep the snow off your dish, and still find unacceptable weather outages, a 24" or 30" will cure it.

Avid TV-watchers in Florida sometimes put in 3 or 4 foot dishes so they can watch Rome burn right through the hurricanes.
(or heavy downpours)

Having said that, I think most Americans have pretty good reception.
(there, that should get the nay-sayers out of the woodwork! )

...and you might search the forum for other discussions of oversized antenna or signal loss.

Also, if you say where you are, maybe folks who live near you will comment on their reception.

 

[Stargazer]

It usually takes a very strong rainstorm to knock out my signal. The SuperDish got covered with snow and still got in almost as strong of a signal as it got without any snow on it.

 

[RobertsD]

I've had it go out about twice in the last couple of months due to really heavy snow storms, signal usually comes back in less then 30 minutes though.

 

[Frostwolf]

If mine goes out, Take cover. Sign your Will, things are coming to an end.

Seriously, if it goes out, its a very serious storm with Tornadoes and Hail (and comes from south west seems worst). Now thats not including the Spotbeams of local channels from Huntsville, AL. I was warned that they would be week in my area.

Anyways, I get 120+ on both 110 and 119 pretty much all the time. I took extra care to align my dish. My sat guy said he's never seen both 110 and 119 pegged out. Some stations stay peg out.

Last storm that came through, We lost Sat for 15 mins (>spot beams , about 3-5 mins on others), Cable went out for 12 hours with internet out 16 hours. Electricity stayed on funny, thing, goes out when the sun shines usually. After the main part of that storm came through, I was diggin a trench out from my hous to the backyard to eleviate drainage problems, water was actually pushing up into my sunroom from under concrete slab through the cracks in the floor.

Anyways,
back to your question, If your sat install guy cares and takes pride in his work, they can get you a signal ( at least in the central time zone areas of TENN, AL.) that won't show fade unless its really bad out. IF not get to tweaking.

 

[jdr01930]

I've had Dish for a little over a year and have yet to experience any rain fade.
In fact, Dish has had better up-time than cable. After one big storm where power went out, when power came back, Sat TV was working immediately, but it was several hours before my cable internet connection was back up. No cables to go down with Sat TV.

I'm convinced that rain fade is a lie propagated by the cable companies - lol.

 

[osu1991]

I have had both dish and direct since the first year they came out, and we have not lost signal more than once a year and for only a couple of minutes. Mainly during a really heavy downpour. I do get a little bit of pixelating in high winds during tornado season but there is nothing I can do about that.

 

[Lifterguy]

I've had dish for about 7 years. I would say I've lost signal on average about 4-6 times in a year - usually for no more than 15-to-30 minutes. Most of those times are due to heavy rain - although I've occassionally seen problems when the storm is at a distance. I moved one year ago, and twice in the past year at the new house, I have lost signal for an hour or two because of wet snow clinging to the dish (which is mounted on the roof.) I don't think I ever had that problem at the old house (where the dish was on a side wall.) Both times the snow melted by midday, and the signal returned.

 

[petrozio]

Only lost signal twice in the past 2 years. Both times due to t-storms. Back on in 15 minutes or so. I have a friend with direct who always complains about loosing signal. Maybe it's because a dish 500 is slightly larger.

 

[rhollinger]

Originally I never lost signal (never meaning maybe 2-3 times a year that I knew about and that was a *really* bad thunderstorm). Even during Hurricane Frances it remained on pretty consistently. I think I started having problems during Hurricane Jeanne. After that, we regularly lost signal during rain storms. I noticed that my signal strength was down significantly and figured I needed to adjust my dish (2 hurricanes for cryin' out loud even though we were on the edges and only got tropical storm force winds).

Well, Wilma solved the dilemma as signal went early and stayed off. After the storm I saw that the dish was *way* out of alignment. Went up the ladder and tried to "best guess" and managed to get enough signal to pull (I think) 119 channels in which was fine for my kids. Now I was the only person on my block with non-local TV (coupled with the generator, kept the kids busy and content).

People with Cable were out for weeks even after power came back.

I helped 2 neighbors adjust their dishes and learned a bit more about how to do it properly. I then took a hand-held LCD TV up the ladder with me at my house and adjusted the Dish one more time and found excellent reception again.

So what does this all mean? I'm never going back to cable...I'd rather have OTA off antenna than have to deal with the hassles and outages. The very few times the signal goes out do not come close to the outages on Cable for completely random reasons (car accidents, flooding, tree uproots, power outages, equipment failure, etc.)

 

[vurbano]

Any time it rains hard, heavy cloud cover or more than an inch of snow.

 

[Mr Tony]

6 years of Dish…lost signal maybe 15 times in those 6 years

-once from an ice storm
-once from HEAVY snow (38 inches in 26 hours)
Other times were due to a bad switch (once) and heavy downpours/very thick clouds

Total time lost during the thunderstorms…maybe 2 hours total

 

[datwell]

We very seldom lose Dish - only during very heavy rain. Dish is far more reliable that the old cable company ever was.

--Doug

 

[riffjim4069]

Very infrequently...maybe 2-3 times the past year and for very brief period of time (start of a really bad thunderstorm) with Dish Network and maybe another 3-4 times the 15 months prior with VOOM. When the E* installer left, most of my signal levels were between 95-107. Of course, I peaked both dishes and almost all are between 102-117. Just as long as you're dish is properly sighted you shouldn't have too many problems.

 

[papalittle]

my dish is really strange, it hardly goed out in heavy rain but does go out in light rain sometimes or some times on sunny days but only for a short period of time. I have a superdish with signal strength of 125 on 110, 110 on the 119 and 85 on the 105.

 

[downriver]

I dunno. I think mine's been steppin' out some late at night with that slutty little dish down the road!!!

 

[LER]

I've had dish since 1999, and have had VERY reliable service. The issues were usually a VERY heavy rain, and those clear inside of 20-30 minutes, and a BUNCH of SW-64's that didn't like the weather in Dallas. once I got to DP34's all was MUCH better.

I now have a DPP44 (and it's INSIDE, which will help).

It's been VERY reliable here at the new house, but I've only been here for a couple of months.

LER

 

[josem3]

Good question. I probably lost my signal 3-4 times a year but I try to go to my local channels(110) where there are all on spot beams, stronger signal 125 at 125. It has to be heavy rain like t-storm to really lost signal which I prefer to turn off my TV.